


Liaisons

by hypsoline



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: 19th Century, Canon Era, Character Study, F/M, Foreshadowing, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution, M/M, Murder, Paris (City), Past Relationship(s), Pining Grantaire, Prostitution, Smut, The law of the streets, Vanity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-19
Updated: 2017-05-19
Packaged: 2018-11-02 12:52:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10944885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hypsoline/pseuds/hypsoline
Summary: 'Pale skin as white as snow, hair as black as the night and lips as red as blood, as plump as cherries. 'A study in red, of Montparnasse and different amis he slept with.





	Liaisons

Lips and face and neck. These were the first parts of his body others were enchanted by, before meeting his eyes.

First the lips, plump and red, as dark cherries, as if just bitten out of love, red like a whore’s. Blush is heavily looked upon as well, as if aristocrats themselves didn’t powder their whole skin in it just a few decades ago. So he puts some more, powders it away. The heels of his boots remind those older than him of that time too. They're higher than necessary, higher than what is practical to run around the foul streets of Paris. High enough to give his hips a sway when he walks by, top hat to the side revealing his black curls. Heels high enough to be handy to hide things in, treacherous things. His hips, his mouth, his skinny elegant waist enough to distract outsider eyes from a blade hidden in those very heels. All of him is treacherous, a beautiful deception made boy.   
  
He buys a red rose from a flower girl, her knees brown with dirt. He isn’t above paying a sous to someone whose destiny is even tighter laced than his waist corset.

 

The students know Montparnasse well, some know him too much.

It started with Grantaire. A known bearded face to the whores who cleaned his bloody snot after a fight and kissed his lips for a drink and a few coins. They know well how to shut him up, his long discourses on matters they can’t be involved in. Feeling almost sorry but no one has got it any easy, nobody tells to Grantaire's face things he already knows deep down. It is better to open his pants than his heart, or else a flood will catch you. He has the face and posture of a doomed man, a man whose fate is to sink in a wreck, to die on the rocky shores of a tempest; he probably has this in his palms too, read by a pretty dark skinned woman he met once.

He looks brute, made of stone, no wonder he will sink. But at the brothels and the taverns, he never hits, never claims to be more than the lowly man he is. Never asks for the most grotesque of acts certain gentlemen, more polished than him, would ask for. He seeks company, real human beings, even if he earnestly pays for it. An artist, a sculptor, a vague philosopher, a faux courtesan, a plain drunk. He is more content with reality when he is drowning in that red wine, redder than Montparnasse's lips, redder than the flag the students have secret meetings by. Redder and darker than the one that leaves Grantaire to sink. The man's thirst for blonde hair and icy blue eyes the very thing that brings him to the brothels. The very person, the very man he wants to forget: Enjolras.

It wasn’t surely his blonde hair nor his blue eyes that attracted Grantaire to Montparnasse, one day in a tavern, for he is the dark opposite. Montparnasse, all pale skin, black slick hair overstyled in what was the fashion of the time, or so he said; rouge and powder to cover his dark circles, his nights on the job, his stern dark calculating eyes, the body of a murderer coated in fine clothing. Artifice and show, a trap set to kiss and kill. For when you looked closely you started to see it: the fraying at the collar, the outdated patterns, the sewn up sleeve, the elegant legs and torso of a cat, the cold eyes of someone brought up on the street, ugly remarks out of such a pretty mouth, his teeth sharp and white like pearls. Another devil of the streets, disguised as a dandy. A thief nonetheless, but what a gorgeous figure.

He accepts the dark red wine from Grantaire and his dark company, his boring words aren’t so boring all the time when they offer him useful information; places and faces to watch out for, places and faces to rob, to smother. The little map of the streets is made complete thanks to folk like Grantaire. Men so lost in both the streets and the taverns, artists who make their place amid intellectuals, clean-cut students and colorful whores, cafés where the lowest come to mingle.

Grantaire sees some humanity in Montparnasse he himself does not care to seek or think about, especially when he sketches him on yellow paper, his big fingers covered in charcoal. It would mix in his affairs, his profession. It is better like this, getting both so drunk Grantaire will take them to his atelier – his apartment, robbed of space by paint and bottles and canvases – and fuck him down on the makeshift mattress. Grantaire has big hands and arms and the muscled back of a boxeur. He fucks him well, his charcoal stained fingers linger on his hips and make patterns. Grantaire is a good lover, albeit a melancholic one as he finishes, something in his eye wanting whomever sits under him that is not there.

Montparnasse does not care to hear, he knows it is not about him, or whoever Grantaire chooses to make love to and bring home. Grantaire wasn't always the drowned man. He was now because he had known love, the passion of wanting and holding only air, or another body. The romance in suffering that fuels him in rant and song and alcohol. The romance in knowing that nobody else seems to do quite as well, not like before.

But yet he won’t act on it, he hides, he fights, he pushes the man he loves away. And then talks to the prostitutes of Paris, or to whomever may hear him - in this case  Montparnasse - all about his failures. Oh yes, Montparnasse has heard, of the blonde révolutionnaire handing out pamphlets on the streets, recruiting commoners for a cause. Students, as previously said, most of them, yelling with their fresh voices, fresh youthful faces, and childhoods coated in dreams and chances, not in bickering for bread, not spent between crumbling walls. And what is their cause exactly, what bothers him so much to dwell amongst poor and sicken, green faced commoners. They’re not fallen angels in the streets, among the barracks and the houses in ruins, the decrepit cafés with collapsed signs, they are all children of circumstance; their only cause is to keep on living one day at a time.

THe bourgeoisie does not understand this, they keep fighting their fight, wanting to cure what is already as it is. Men, women and children parade around them curious and smiling. As if they could even read the pamphlets that pride for their freedom, most are curious and kind enough to see these boys mean them well. Sparrows flying around crumbs, like flea ridden dogs happy to finally meet their masters. Naive, for their harsh winters have yet to come. Naive too, for the concept of social freedom is quite abstract to any of them. They’re content enough someone realizes they exist, that this other Paris exists, always existed. Maybe it was the only Paris before, before kings and the lot of them generals came up to impose systems and laws and writing, concerning one and all. What is the use of that to the poor folk? When empires fall and crumble it is always the law of the streets that surfaces, the one Montparnasse was raised in, the one every single of his kin know of in their blood. The boulevards have seen it all.

The students want to change this, they say, they pray and plead and yell for a brighter future. Liberty for all, wasn’t that what the revolution was all about before? And what a great deal that was, though Montparnasse knows only of tales.

They're all the same.

As if the revolution started and ended, the dark days are still a reality. There is no rest for the wicked, no warm beds and maids to tuck you in, no food ready in the morning. To students, to the other pristine classes, the streets are lessons, sheets to be thorn from books, causes to be helped. Montparnasse rolls his eyes whenever he sees that blonde one, the leader. God, is he not the worse. How is Grantaire ever crying over _him_. What does he know of them? Hair so pristine, curly and yellow like the sun, skin so milky and white, eyes so clear. Lips and jacket the color of carnation marching through the streets, where he mingles with poor and shitstained orphans as if their equal. How unfit. He is a statue from a museum, not a man.

Montparnasse knows Grantaire sees a bit of the blonde boy in him. God, how he hates that he recals, as his red lips swallow Grantaire's thick cock in order to silence his pleas for a greek God he will never hold.

All in all, he is not so mistaken. Both Enjolras and Montparnasse are like twins, one of light and one of shadow. They’re the same age, their faces beautiful like in old paintings, their hands elegant and thin, their skin paper white. Artists care for these things, for classical beauty, for beauty in woman and man. For the invisible strokes nature painted when their mothers gave birth to them. But when the gods sculpted them with the strokes of beauty, something went wrong, for Enjolras was given gold and marble and Montparnasse was given mud and cutting metal. Inside Montparnasse is as different from Enjolras as a pigeon to an eagle. Roses and carnations. Both are beautiful, blood red. But only one has thorns.

He is finished now. He cleans his blade on his boot absentmindedly as Grantaire wastes away, hairy belly exposed, semen on his pubes as he continues to babble on of love, of ignorance, of pointlessness. Montparnasse listens, half awake, he always does even when it is boring like this, and it always leads to Grantaire cursing the world he was born into. Montparnasse doesn’t show he minds, he pulls his knives away in petite little pockets with little bows. Let his jealously adorn his stare like the green flame of absinthe, for it is not jealously at all that bothers him but the desire to be better. To be richer and better off than that stupid marble boy. Grantaire is a fool to wish a cold virgin; and he will sink in the ice-cold seas of his own demise, of the other's blue eyes.

But he pays, and he fucks so well.

So let the drunks say what they want, let them drown and vive la France, as they say.

Montparnasse leaves to the cold streets, his jacket in place, his thin hips under cloth so tight hiding his sins, more blades, charcoal strokes from heavy fingers. The moon goes high in the sky, covered by the smoke of the city and its vices. A couple yards away, a girl coughs into her rags of a dress. Tuberculosis probably, with this weather there are so many of her. She won't last long, not at this time if she keeps to the streets for bread and water. That is the only memory he has of his mother, and he realizes it brings him no emotion at all, so detached and common and faraway a picture it is.

Time to work.  


***

Grantaire was his link to the other students. Even though it never made much sense for Grantaire to hang out with them if he didn’t believe them in the proper sense, if he wasn't even a student at all, - as the only thing he studied were blowjobs and wine -, if he even mocked their cause. Not all the others are like Enjolras, straight faced and poised, a rebel among the rich but a rich boy in the streets nonetheless. Still Montparnasse admits God has given him one purpose only, and that purpose is the one he obeys too. Much like himself, if survival was considered a social revolution that is. If either Montparnasse and Enjolras believed in a God too.

 

***

  
Enough of the frigid blonde.

There are others. For them this is an exercise in democracy, in mimicking their loved leaders, their compatriots, in their search for a world that will never exist. And maybe they know this deep down, or they’re just as dumb as all the others but keep it light, they don’t let it cloud their minds or free time too much. Montparnasse sees them in between glasses of emerald absinthe, arms around each other or pretty girls. Tables covered with school books, forgotten, for they are drinking and writing and laughing, mouths hanging open, no different from the rest of them.

Jehan sat with them often, one look into his dark eyes and he was offering Montparnasse a drink. Green like his coat, he had said. What a shy, shy boy he had seemed to Montparnasse. The peculiar type of old money, blue veins on his wrists like Enjolras, an almost noble lineage, but a much friendlier smile, much tender eyes. Enjolras never joined his colleagues at the taverns anyway. Him and Montparnasse, as polar opposites, Jehan had explained, are not meant to be on the same place. Grantaire had laughed then, spilling wine on his date’s skirt and bosom. Exaggerated yes, but he was a drunk and there is nothing worse than a drunk in love.

Jehan was a different breed, in every sense of the word. He liked to explain things, not to dissolve them in acid and hate or sadness, but to understand them. His red hair and stubble don't set him apart too much, especially under the tavern's sickly lights, his skin a greenish-yellow, his lips a pout. But his soul did differentiate him from the others, a romantic and a poet, what use for those?

 

His kisses are soft and inexperienced used to lyrical foreign words; his hands used to books and paper, not bodies. Montparnasse felt almost bad about corrupting him, if he ever felt bad for anything he did.

Jehan dressed and thought like a medieval man, or so he said. Rich boys are prone to these fantasies, to be born into glory but still wanting to be someone else. Maybe it is a disease of the mind all humanity has, Montparnasse finds himself thinking but this is something Grantaire would say, all pessimism and insane drunk laughter afterwards. It is definitely a disease from reading too much, from filling your head with nothing but others' achievements and languages and cultures. He holds Montparnasse by the arm when they leave the taverns, the cafés. He touches softly as if to not thin the oversewn fabric, not to undo the ribbons. As if not to wear at Montparnasse's beauty - nor his patience, he has heard stories after all. He holds him by the elbow, they're old friends, like Montparnasse is a débutant at a ball. What a shy boy this Jehan, but nevertheless intrepid.

 

One night, over opium and sweets, his legs drapped around Jehan’s under a fine cloth from China embroidered in swans and other elegant birds, Jehan patted his head like a child and read poems to him.

Jehan liked the finer things; oils from Greece, made of the purest olives, plates and smoke from the Orient, tapestries from the times of first kings, when France was in its infancy. The virgins with their unicorns, the damsels in their distress, the women pious to God drowning out of love for Him, nuns, priestesses of the night, dancing to the moon in white robes. Montparnasse was no damsel, neither was Jehan. But Jehan wrote and spoke of this as if he had lived those lost times, as if he understood women at all. Montparnasse knew this not to be so true, no woman nor girl he knew would sacrifice herself so domestically, without a fight. But again, the bridges between them were large. Jehan lived a noble world, with norms and etiquette and bindings - and most of all, he lived a fantasy. A fantasy made of a past that didn't happen quite like this and a present that wasn’t even there, not for Montparnasse anyway.

The opium and the sweets were real every time although and so was his blushing face and soft words. Jehan's red stubble, his masculine oval face with his thin nose and his soft chin. His eyes almond shaped and kind as he smiles. What was this boy doing with the others? Did he believe in a better world when he was so stuck in the past, of nuns and knights and in tragic love? Tragedy was what abounded around him. Yet death aroused Jehan’s senses it seemed, like opium did not. Maybe it was enough to make it all real for him. Who knows what goes inside nobleman’s heads, their blood old, precious in blue veins and fine wrists, soft eyes and soft faces unused to fighting the wars by themselves, as they play the chess of the world from above.

Jehan asked him why he wore mostly black once, thinking of deep dark jewels, or Montparnasse's dark eyes and curls to be the reason. Some poetic reason, he murmured "So which is it, a jewel, the mantle of the night or the pretty vanity of your curls?" Montparnasse laughed and let Jehan dream on his lap as he smoked. 

Blood on the streets is common, it paints them, it gives them life, makes it flourish in the high hours of the night. It spatters on the cobblestones too, sips through the cracks of your boots. Makes a mess to clean off your clothes. Montparnasse wipes it with a handkerchief he keeps around, the smell of iron and petals following him wherever he goes. 

 

Jehan made love, properly and slow, tantalizing, stopping in between to huff and puff on opium or a cigarette, a lock of his hair over his obscured face as he hands it over to Montparnasse. The air around them in Jehan’s room is so thick always, scented with incense and spices like a caricature of an orient market; the heavy ambience of an old museum storage and church combined in one. Jehan decorates his room like a harem of no brides, only him. Pillows scattered about, precious fabrics floating in the breeze, damask and embroidered in purple and golden thread, something Montparnasse finally knows the worth of. Montparnasse knows not of harems however, but he knows of brothels and this isn’t exactly it. Still, Jehan tries at this erotic play he is still so well read on but so unpracticed at. He always sucks a bit too tight on Montparnasse’s red lips, wishing them to be more plump, he always takes longer between his legs too, wishing it to linger, for the sex to smudge in the air like the smoke from the incense and the oils. Sickeningly sweet, probably still fantasizing about celibate maidens as he kisses Montparnasse's nefarious mouth.

Afterwards he reads to him, like a parent to a child. It bores Montparnasse, all these tales of old France, of death, of sacrifice, of ‘beauty in tragedy’ Jehan says. He never found it appetizing, not particularly. He has killed men, women, with his blades, with his cold gaze. His clothes, his face and his blades make him beautiful, not everything else. Does Jehan even know of this? How empty and numb to it he becomes to death? It is a job, not a passion. The law of the streets, if there is any at all. If death were beautiful, all murder would be desirable. Montparnasse scoffs to himself. He has lost count at how many he has gutted, but he won't bring it here, he won't ruin Jehan's fantasies. Something about him is too soft, lingers too long to last. If there is anything Montparnasse learnt from his stories, and life - finally, they agreed on something - is that the good die young.

Indeed all things must become appetizing when seen with an exterior lens, with a different eye; when written down perhaps, if Montparnasse knew how to properly read. Jehan tried to teach him one time, thinking Montparnasse would stay, unlike the feline he was, a common thief, a robber, an assassin underneath all that beauty and clothing. Montparnasse, the stray cat, his eyes still shimmer towards Jehan at the tavern and Jehan calls out to him, with a finger, knowing he will be gone the morning after.

 

***

 

It’s Courfeyrac who hugs him to his chest, his hand big on Montparnasse’s silken covered waist, a new waistcoat. Courfeyrac smells of beer and ink, as students often do, but also musk, fresh linen and sweat. And it is all more arousing than it should be. His words come covered in visions of pleasure like honey, and then perfid words, vulgar for such an educated man to say. Courfeyrac is close to him, they have fucked in alleyways, in his bed. Courfeyrac has even paid for his new silken waistcoat, for his meals. Filling his stomach with food and wine after filling him up in the dark, whispering him dark words as they both moan from ecstasy. 

Montparnasse likes this, it is quite funny, like youth itself as a man. Courfeyrac himself is quite funny, a charming man who can lure both rich and poor with his open laughs, his cheery disposition. He never looks sad, nor has a taste for the melancholy and tragic like Grantaire and Jehan. He lives it as it is, life in full, like his beer and his wine glasses, always full.

And Courfeyrac laughs, how he laughs. What a contagious laugh, what a smile, one to brighten up a whole room, to lift everyone's spirits like a good wine.

What a good smile and what a good cock too. Courfeyrac is a savage man disguised as a Parisian. Or perhaps, a Parisian who is true to his nature amidst all the other fakes.

 

He feels like Courfeyrac is a school boy tasting his first whore, but Courfeyrac is far too mature and far too handsy. He has known flesh before, he has copulated and conquered before. He is the one to surprise him, not the other way round. Courfeyrac has been around too, a girlfriend or two, maybe a liaison with an older woman, an older man? He could see that. Montparnasse is his liaison now, his young man and his distraction from his studies. Maybe he got tired of provençal women; he is not the type for choosing a bourgeois girl, prude or not, and sticking with her for long. Not yet anyhow, though soon it might change as he ages. But for now he relinquishes his youth, drinks it away like nectar.

Maybe he likes the smell of danger, the iron of blood mixed with the lilac scents on Montparnasse’s neck when he bites him there. Courfeyrac is so big at points it itches Montparnasse for a couple of days after they lay. Courfeyrac is hairy too, but he does not have the physique of a rock or the tall paleness of Jehan. To match his strong curls and stuble, Courfeyrac's body is covered in whisps of wavy black hair. His eyes are black too, always twinkling with delight, his mouth hungry in a smirk, like the devil he is as he dumbs Montparnasse on he bed.

A tiger he is, as he jumps on the mattress to meet him, when they do have a mattress and not a cold alleyway, or a backseat at the theater, Montparnasse feels even more like a whore, than in the streets, when Courfeyrac holds him like so, his hands around his neck and face red with passion when Montparnasse cums hard.

Oh he likes the smell of danger alright, he has had a thing for Montparnasse since Montparnasse stole him blind in an alleyway one late night, after drinking. He gave him a blow job too, his big red lips spreading around Courfeyrac’s cock as his nifty gloved hand stole his last coins from him. His lips spread apart and his tongue tasting him over, sucking and slurping and not wasting time on safeguarding any noises. Courfeyrac was thankful anyhow, because there was no way he didn’t notice, no way he didn’t come back for more. He wants adventure and he knows he found it, his nouveau riche look is a trap, deep down he runs with the same rusty blood as Montparnasse.

 

Nouveau riches think themselves the new nobles, but have no boundaries. Their heads light with their sudden successes, with their sudden richesses. They’re easier to hate and easier to sympathize with, they could be anybody until arrogance spoils them. But Courfeyrac isn’t spoiled by arrogance and Montparnasse doubts he ever will be. He possesses that quality of mingling with the classes, not as an artist or a poet with their sorrows and cries, not with sharing facts and stories that aren’t his, but as a man, speaking openly. Maybe not too long ago their ancestors had the same rules, the same unspoken rules, if only it was for Montparnasse to dwell on such thoughts, even while giving head.

 

Courfeyrac is, above all, a simple man. And what a joy it is to serve such a simple man. Who will buy him dinner and not stink of piss or tobacco or tears, a man with no wife to bugger his conscience, a man with a gorgeous, handsome face, eyes and hair dark like the country men from the south, raised in the sun, strong like bulls.

Arms strong to pin Montparnasse to his cock and make him ride it there, like he belongs in Courfeyrac's lap. No explanations, just simple animalistic desire, passion running through their bodies and tongues as they kiss. Oh, how Montparnasse likes when he does that, a smile on his lips, Montparnasse held like a light weight, touched in full. He grabs him like a country man would grab his lover, pinning her to the poppy fields and filling her with his seed; hands savvy, the body knows what to do, where to touch. It is pleasure at its primal, no etiquette, no shame, no dimmed candles. 

Courfeyrac runs his big hands through Montparnasse's white chest and nipples, grazes them with a devilish smile. The smile of a faun, a god of the forest as he penetrates Montparnasse with his swollen cock, freshly sucked and ripped with veins, leaking at the top like dew. A cock so red and big Montparnasse feels fire when he takes it and then shivers. Montparnasse smiles at him, his eyes half closed with pleasure, one hand holding Courfeyrac's dwelling hand from his nipples to his mouth, where his big red lips bite and suck as Courfeyrac pumps into him finally and leaks around his bum and the linen.

They drop on the bed, as if after a long ride, and Courfeyrac laughs whole heartedly and Montparnasse can't help but laugh as well in a post coital daze.

How refreshing he is. A man who is still a student, still free from the weight of the world, but also, who is rich.

 

***

 

But this is not a story about Courfeyrac. Nor Jehan. Nor Grantaire.

 

It is not about any of these student boys, who each have loved Montparnasse their own way. Who still do, their fingers lingering here and there, eyes hopeful with invitation. Smirks and kisses in dark alley ways, money, a watch stolen from their pockets.

 

Not today.

This is about the one time he seduced Bahorel.

 

***

 

Montparnasse cleans his nails with his smallest knife, _Clottine._

He named all of them when he was a child, when he had his first kill. Like a girl would name her dolls, like a boy would name a pet. _Clottine, Ie Comte, Isabelle, Ada, Sebastiénne, Belle de Nuit..._

He had been twelve then, the other man was close to forty. No teeth in his mouth that reeked every time he pulled Montparnasse’s lips to his, grunting like a beast as he touched himself. It was an easy kill too. He sliced his throat, it gushed with gurgling sounds, like the old statues at notre dame when the skies poured. Like the pigs being slaughtered at the abattoir down the street, a screeching sound mixed with one of rain. A funny sound. He then went to his wallet, only to find it nearly empty. He kicked the man a couple times, slashed him more for good measure. His belly so fat it had to be hit a few times, Montparnasse trying out the blade as if on leather, getting the hang of it. The blade was tiny in his childish tiny hands, one of his most seeked features now becoming two.

He was born a boy of the streets, and as such not many paths were available to him, but that day he had discovered a new one. He wouldn’t have killed the man if he had at least paid him, or taken him somewhere to eat. The streets were filled with his kind anyway. Bearded fat men who seemed like gentle grandpas in thorn clothes, until they forced their tongue down your pants and their shrivelled old cocks on your face. Some were gentle, some were crude, all were desperate and lustful. Montparnasse had had the gift of being born without the kind of naiveté that would have made him broken, like the boys who grow up to be these men. No. Instead he manipulated them.

He could get work anywhere. It is the noble gentlemen boys like him had to watch out for. Gentlemen and noblemen, politicians and professors who came to grab children from the streets who were never seen again. Once Montparnasse got older, it got easier to fool such classes. And such noblemen weren’t in search of a child to do God knows what anyway, they were in search of a good ol' working man as they would be in search of a good ol' working woman. All kinds of tastes in this world.

 

Prostitution, robbery, murder.

A boy does what he must do. Oh and he looked so fine doing it, he never even considered the other probabilities. Jobs to him don’t mean honest paying jobs anymore, that’s something others do, unscarred by blood on their hands, at least not all of them. Everyone has their talents, he shouldn't waste his.

 

Patron-Minette offers him that kind of thing almost; steady gigs, at the cost of blood. It is all become common practice to him now. If they didn’t do it, someone else’s gang might have done it, the streets thirst for blood and pump with excitement over horror. It is all in human nature. If a butcher refuses to do their job, another butcher will take their place. They even have the decency to operate at odd hours, the crisp lights between night and morning, when fishermen are arriving at the shore and whores and drunks are going home. The street lamps still on, until a boy climbs them on a ladder to blow the candles; routines of every day.

 

Montparnasse knows of this other student that caught his attention.

The one in the lot without a family name to his sake, old or new, to keep him afloat as he rents and studies and affords all those things students stupidly spend their money on. Peasant parents, although not peasant enough to not give his child a good education. He studies law but will never become a lawyer, and all had laughed and drinked to that as Montparnasse watched from his seat, the girl by his side sleeping on her arms.

Bahorel likes silken vests like him, but fights in the light of day, with words sharp and intelligent. Another member of the group who can actually speak to the other masses, the peasants, much like his parents. He likes jokes and laughing, like Courfeyrac. But his the type of jokes you hear in the fields amongst workers, even cruder and rough at the edges, like the ones you hear in brothels.

Bahorel likes women too, he likes one especially. A pretty brown haired girl with a temper, plump, her chest like a dove’s, her hands in her apron as she sells vegetables on the street, or was it flowers? Her parents away in the countryside, like so many others. Bahorel visits her sometimes, but they never argue, nor do they seem to. He likes her better when she is quiet, laughter has no place in a woman’s face - he says, to his friends as this way there will be no resentments between them, no high hopes to keep. The gall of him, Montparnasse would have cut him if he had been that girl. He knows she probably wants to, if she were that kind. But country girls are docile, unused to the streets of Paris, and all about her seems genuine and soft. She will have to be careful not to end up with child. And Montparnasse nearly feels sorry for this girl he passed by once or twice, maybe he even got a rose from her once.

Bahorel would probably marry her even. He doesn’t seem to fear marriage like his mates, nor the red of the bourgeois despite hanging with them, despite calling them friends. He fights an institution but still engages in it. As protest he dresses himself scarlet instead, scarlet opinions for a scarlet mouth of someone raised by the poor but with all the quick thinking of the working folk, who leave for the factories in the early hours of the morning. L’ABC are not the first and will not be the last.

 

All things considered he is not a man Montparnasse would have looked at twice. He is even shorter than him, by only a mere inch, the heels of his boots are functional, not fashionable. Men like him are not in shortage in Paris, and never will be in shortage anywhere, well spirited surrounded by friends and spirits. He doesn’t care what he says as long as he thinks its truthful and other stick up trying to gain him a pat in the back for such thoughts. Loud, like a child, a commoner like himself. But a politician in the making, a man of the people like Courfeyrac but more blunt even, with specific lists set to stick to the minds to those he speaks to. A tongue made to hurt sometimes, spilling venom and truths as well as jokes. Knowing and studying law and talking about it way too much to really despise it as they say.

A different breed. Like all the students laid bare by Montparnasse before him.

It’s Bahorel who notices him. That’s how these things go sometimes. He tells him he has known of him through Courfeyrac, Jehan and Grantaire. Montparnasse smiles to his drink.

 

Bahorel does not waste time in spitting out humorous thoughts, things he has seen Montparnasse do, things he knows he does. Montparnasse does not waste time in telling him that isn’t news, there are two laws afterall. The law he studies and the law of the streets. Bahorel is intrigued, scratches his chin. His face is pointy, sharp grey eyes under a lock of fallen chestnut hair, a tight handkerchief around his neck. Montparnasse wants to pull him by it, to make him kneel for mercy. As friendly as he is with commoners, a commoner himself, something about Bahorel irritates him, as if they were not meant to mingle as lovers, or not to mingle at all. There is no unspoken passion between them, no curious soft looks, nor a happy excited face waiting for his reaction. Montparnasse names a price, finally ending this charade. Bahorel claps his hands, grabs his hat ‘ Wonderful!’ and so they leave, untouching and with a bottle in hand.

 

The clash of the law of the streets and the law of cultures students are meant to learn and think of as the true one had happened before. All things have happened before, especially between these walls, in Bahorel’s bed. The walls are crisp with the smell of rain from the outside. The windows broken, the curtains liking away at the table, where paper and posters and books abide. He is a clown, a joker, but a serious one. He could doom it all for them had he not been there to speak to the other classes, the ones not even Courfeyrac can reach to.

Maybe their cause is worth something after all.

But Montparnasse does not care.

Maybe he got tired of that sulky brunette and wanted to try a man to see how it felt. Bahorel jokes about men and women alike, he jokes a lot. About Montparnasse’s rouge and knives hidden in places on his robes, about Montparnasse’s being the Les Amis new fillette du jour, or herm, fils du jour. _Don’t tell Enjolras I said it_ he laughs, and for once Montparnasse nearly chuckles as well. Enjolras the only student he will never try, nor want to. Polar forces they are, as Jehan had explained. But Enjolras' posse is proving to be quite entertaining, so far, he can't help himself.

Bahorel burries his half shaved face in Montparnasse’s chest, tearing his shirt open and his neck ribbon away with his teeth. It’s comical indeed. Bahorel may have some truth lying behind his jokes, like everything he says. The poison of common life staining the hopes of the privileged, which he all soothes afterwards with good humor and dedication.

Montparnasse is getting a taste of these students, one by one, but only from the ones he deems fit, the ones who will reward him. Never the leader, for Bahorel doesn’t know, mouth occupied with Montparnasse’s cock, but Montparnasse is a leader himself alright, of his own person, an individual. Enjolras was always out of the question for Montparnasse anyway, he does not like men who are more beautiful than he is, and thankfully, Enjolras does not like men who lower the streets like Montparnasse does, with the shade and shadow of vices and dirt. They are indeed contradictory to each other, a wonder they can co-exist in the same city. Enjolras, the selfless angel with the mightiest of causes, a product of thought and mind, a product of high grooming and high classes gone rogue. Montparnasse, not a villain, not someone to be saved, he already saved himself years ago. A product himself of the streets, the finer, the most dapper, the most dangerous. And still he thrives, he survives. In silent agreement they despise one another, Enjolras out of morals and Montparnasse out of green envy. 

He moans, Bahorel spits in his palms, greasy from the tavern, greasy from touching and greeting everyone on the streets, greasy from the walls of his room and the soot of his words. He runs his hands around Montparnasse’s chest. Not a single mark there, not a single clue he is better with blades than word. They switch places in the bed, not laying side by side anymore, never a contest for equality, but a conquest.

Like Courfeyrac, Bahorel has the country blood in him, but laced with an artificial elegance to it, one that makes him hold Montparnasse’s wrists and twist him around, so he is face down on the linen. And Montparnasse likes it. The oldest fucking position in the world tastes different with everyone. This was how Montparnasse was first fucked too. On a smelly mattress, face down so he wouldn’t scream too much. Things were different then and he was a child, caught in a trap with the promise of food and shelter. This was before he got his blades, this was when he still cared.

Bahorel is tentative, sly, cunning; he waits for the right moment.

More like a fox those shiny eyes suggest, than the impatient bull Courfeyrac is. Not a lyrical lover as Jehan, not a man of stone as Grantaire.

He runs his cock around Montparnasse’s buttocks, covers him with his own cum and spit, craves his nails into him when he shoves himself in. A hunter, kind and slow at the beginning, building up to a storm. Montparnasse moans, Bahorel grabs his black locks, urging him to turn around again.

Montparnasse wonders if this is how Bahorel fucks his girl, on this same bed, her plump body shaking with each stroke, her fat breasts shaking on the mattress as she bites on the pillow until Bahorel tells her to turn around. He must tell her something then, that she is magnificent with her legs wide open, that her breasts are quite beautiful and full, something like that, things men like to say to women they don’t really love. Because Montparnasse knows Bahorel doesn’t love her, or he wouldn’t be fucking him like this, like a fox having its way with a rabbit.

Except Montparnasse is no rabbit.

Bahorel comes closer, he wants Montparnasse to beg, to be a docile girl from the country fields, just this once, just so he comes, just so his fantasy of him is complete.

Montparnasse would have said yes if he were Courfeyrac, Grantaire or Jehan; but they would never dwell in fantasies so close to home when they had their stars, their goddesses and gods and Montparnasse was just a fuck, an experience in their beds, lingering like cheap perfume.

A quick movement and Montparnasse has his tiniest blade, his first blade on Bahorel’s neck, above the line of his handkerchief.

“No. You beg.”

It’s the law of the streets. Bahorel swallows hard, getting a kick out of this too, flushed face and puffs away a few loose strands of his hair from his face. He likes this, he likes the fact Montparnasse is annoyed, his black curls furiously in disarray around his girlish face, his red lips in a snarl but parted with pleasure. Montparnasse holds him, finally, by the stupid neck handkerchief, bringing this back to a quarrel, like two lovers fighting and fucking midway.

And then Bahorel does it, he holds the blade smirking; brings it down as he lowers himself on Montparnasse’s chest, coming inside him. The blade cuts skin, a tiny ball of dark red on Montparnasse’s otherwise white powder chest, but it isn’t his, it’s Bahorel’s. A little cut on his neck from the pressure, a memory that will last longer than any kiss.

Montparnasse smiles. He won.

 

When they’re both done Bahorel gets up, cleans up and checks the cut in the mirror.

"This is what you get when you play with stray cats", Bahorel says, his smile never living his face. Montparnasse feels the semen coming out from him in drips as he lifts up and starts getting dressed. He doesn’t answer him.

 

He gets paid, not a sous less nor more, and steals the rest of the wine bottle they never got to finish when they got to Bahorel’s room, eyes clouded with fiery lust. _Clottine_ the blade, hidden away back in her ribbon-esque hideout, with her sisters.

 

Bahorel won’t be looking for him again, not ever after this. They will see each other in taverns and out and about; a tip of the hat, just a tiny look, or whatever Montparnasse pleases that day. He will fix the rose on his lapel, the cane under his arm and pretend he is an aristocrat of the night, making his way through the group of students, unknowingly to passersby that half of them have tasted his cherry lips.

Bahorel has had his taste for danger, maybe now he will appreciate his girl more. But Montparnasse doubts it.

 

 

No matter who he sleeps with, it is always different. He is glad to be back to Patron-Minette that night, to his own kin, people worse than him even, if there is anyone to ever judge such a thing. Even Éponine is back, if only to bring in secrets and information about their target tonight.

 

The law of the streets, his blades shining in the moonlight, more importantly a red rose, its thorns hidden away like him and his knives. The flower freshly adorns his jacket, red as his lips.

 

***

 

That night, late into the early hours of the morning, Éponine tells him, of a tale she heard as a small child, or maybe she was told by someone who stayed at her parents’ inn. Maybe she heard it from a friend back when she had friends, not acquaintances. It is too dangerous to make friends on the streets, especially if you have nothing to give but yourself, especially if you’re not expecting a trade.

The tale goes like this, a princess in snow white skin, black hair like the night and the red lips of a rose, she was kept as a slave by a bad, bad queen. She doesn’t remember the rest, there is a part with a knife and a heart but in reality it is a deer’s heart, and the princess runs away to the forest. There must be more to it, she mutters, she seeks refuge among men, but when they are off to work, she is gifted poisonous and fatal gifts by the queen. She doesn’t remember why the queen wants her gone, although the tale probably ends in death, like they all do. There is a prince, who comes too late, and a funeral.

Éponine loves these tales, her mother used to tell them to her when she wasn’t yet as crude inside as she became outside, gruesome, evil in the actual storybook sense, but not to her daughters. These tales were the reason she became so curious, her head full of things, her father yells one finger in the air, spit coming out of his mouth; as if it were a bad thing, as if Éponine’s street smart intelligence hadn’t saved them once or twice from the guillotine. Éponine is so unlike that girl Bahorel likes, so unlike the primrose innocent girls the students seem to favor – the only exception being Grantaire that is.

Maybe they don’t favor Éponine because she is invisible to them as a girl, as _a girl_ of the streets. Even though she should be contemplated in their cause, and not just the faceless crowd of the commoners. Maybe because she is smarter than them, Montparnasse smirks.

Tales of death, _la mort_.

A common familiar sound, _la mort_. The sound of a corpse of what was once a man hanging from a noose swaying while his shoes scrape the wood of the podium. Blood dripping like a fountain from someone’s throat, mixing on the cobblestones of the street with the shit and dust and mud, rats flying about. Suicides, mistakes, a fall and a broken skull or worse, fiery attempts at assassination, crimes of passion like Spanish operas; or death in big numbers, disease, a plague, the worst type of death in his opinion. Death arriving by their own hand in Montparnasse’s opinion is almost merciful. Torture keeps you alive but barely, but a swish movement to the throat is like a guillotine, a few twitches and gurgled words and then no more suffering. The only better death is the one that comes swiftly in the night, reserved for the just and old, taking them in their sleep. A tarot card of a skeleton face with a scythe, fallen from somebody's luggage as their horse slipped on the stone of the pavement.

 

The sun rises. They part ways.

 

Montparnasse wipes himself with a rag, bathes in cold water, the dried blood on his hair, the dried semen on his buttocks. He had almost forgotten that sweet sour boy, with his sly fox gaze and his smart comments.

He washes away, thoughtfully not missing any spots, like a black cat, if cats took baths in the water. He wonders what the princess of the tale died of, why didn’t she used her looks to get advantage and protection, why didn’t she kill the queen herself. Maybe she liked the queen, wanted to give her a chance.

Oh what a foolish girl, thinking she could change the way the world works. If she had been a country girl maybe she had managed, maybe she hadn’t waited for a prince, or for the good in people to win.

Even if it is just a hag’s tale, there must be some truth in it, he ponders. He looks out the window, where the tight faced creatures of the night like himself, gave place to their daily versions, children playing around, women and men carrying on and about their day, young girls from the field selling their flowers, fresh eggs, fresh baked bread.

The princess had dark hair, pale skin and blood red lips like him, which Montparnasse won’t forget. It is everything else that is not a reflection of him. Kindness, forgiveness and getting yourself into others’ affairs will only get you so far if you are too soft, too kind, too full of dreams to fight a war on earth.

What a shame though, for such a pretty princess.

 

Some people just aren’t meant to get themselves into such troubles and fights, now are they?

 

 

***


End file.
